Daily Prayer

Friday, 28 November 2014

I love this set of short vignettes from Ben Myers. I love the sense of stopping, of taking time to see, the sense of being present and attentive within this world. What are the vignettes, the seeing you’d want to preserve in words? Where are you standing, sitting, seeing…?

Here’s an example of one of Ben’s reflections. Presumably his standpoint is Long Beach in California.

“…Saint

A man gets out of a car and stands beside me. He’s one of those gangsta types in baggy gangsta clothes. We stand for a while looking at the sea. Without turning he asks me, “What’s going on?” I tell him, “The sun is setting.” “True that,” the gangsta says. “Happen right here every day.” Then he goes down on to the sand and stays there a long time. Later I see him sitting on the sand, hands folded, looking up into the golden sky. The longer I watch him, the more I am persuaded that he is a poet or a saint…”

You can read them all here. Related is his 2012 “California Notebook”, here.

Thursday, 27 November 2014

I absolutely agree with the following quote. It describes a reality I see all too often in my own life. Whether it’s busyness or something else, all too often we find that our internal and external realities insulate us from so much that is happening in us and around us; cut us off from the deeper realities from which a true, richer and more authentic humanity is nurtured, nourished and formed in us.

“If we are as busy as we pretend to be, then we are too busy to allow ourselves to be affected by the pain and suffering of our world. We are too busy to be addressed personally by the social, political or ecological disasters occurring in our relationships. We are too busy to listen to our own feelings or those of others. Our busyness insulates us from care and from compassion.”

- Sr. Janet Ruffing.“Ruffing is a Sister of Mercy theologian and professor of spirituality, Sister Janet Ruffing, R.S.M., Ph.D., teaches graduate courses on Christian spirituality, mystics and mysticism, and meditation at Yale Divinity School. Sister Ruffing also is Professor Emeritus of Spirituality and Spiritual Direction at Fordham University. Her research, publications, and teaching focus on Catholicism, feminism/feminist theology, prayer and spirituality. She has lectured widely in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and the Pacific. She was a founding member of Spiritual Directors International and is president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality.” You’ll find copies of some of her many essays’ here.

Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Was having lunch with a great friend yesterday and we were discussing, over a beer, the great struggle of many churches to be incarnational – to enflesh genuine “good news” at the level of the local, the ordinary and the everyday. I guess, for me anyway, there was an implicit critique with respect to the churches (local) inability to do good local theology; to take place, context, culture, history etc. seriously. Local theology is contextual theology.

It brought to mind this recent post from my Canadian blogging friend Len Hjalmarson, who highlights another book on the subject:

“…[Clemens] Sedmak writes, “There is a growing awareness that theology is not an instant product that we take from the shelf and put some (local) water in it in order to have an enjoyable drink. Theology is a specifically local adventure if it wants to be relevant for a particular culture. As Michael Amaladoss says ‘The flowering of local theology is a sign of the rootedness and maturity of a particular church.’ And also a sign of the rootedness and maturity of theologians…

…Maybe our theological imagination needs to look more like this [see diagram to the left]. The role of the particular setting where the church is in dialogue with the gospel has become larger than ever. This is because we are giving ear to marginalized voices; we are opening a wider ground for conversation, and listening to voices that are far away. We are recognizing that conditions have changed and culture has shifted — we have to listen anew in order to wrestle with questions that are new. So I propose a larger role for culture in this trialogue…

Tuesday, 25 November 2014

Is religion intrinsically violent? Many atheists say yes - while many religious believers see their faith tradition as being about peace and harmony, with the violent stuff somehow marginal to the real message. On this episode of Encounter they complicate both of those pictures, with the help of some thinkers who’ve explored the relationships between religion and violence in fascinating - and sometimes challenging - ways. The two primary interlocutors in this conversation are theologians James Alison and William T. Cavanaugh.

Note too, that when you visit the page I link to, you will find towards the bottom of it extra audio content featuring fascinating one-on-one conversations with Alison and Cavanaugh.

James Alison – Desire, Victimhood & Rene Girard (I suspect this conversation dates back a couple of years, but I don’t recall having heard it before).

Monday, 24 November 2014

Communal or collaborative discernment and its practice is something I’ve long found fascinating. There’s much to be said for a collective approach, especially when we think of the complexity we face everyday, especially when we think of the sheer scale of data that is available to us today. How do we make decisions? How do we listen well? How do we work in healthy ways with difference and conflict? How do we bring discernment into business? Can we actually even bring the practices of discernment into business?

The following is an excerpt from an article on the paradigm out of which Pope Francis operates; a paradigm very different from the approach so many of us are very used to: somebody higher up in the hierarchy makes a decision and our task is to implement it. Tell us what to do and we will do it. So, the author of the article I’m referencing can write, “…The previous two Popes made decisions the rest of the Church was expected to implement…” It’s a truism, but its not just true of the Catholic Church.

Just prior to typing this I had been engaging with a documentary on economics; on the increasing disparity between the “haves” and the “have not’s” (for Kiwi readers, the documentary was in the very good Nigel Latta TV series Nigel Latta(see TV1 on demand, here). How do we make practical sense of the information we are given in a show like this? How do we engage widely (i.e. collectively), creatively, intelligently, imaginatively, courageously and passionately to the challenges of creating a different economic paradigm?

I need others to read the signs of the times. I know I don’t need sameness. I know I need to join with others, in all their richness and diversity, to wisely attend to my own micro-challenges and those of the wider macro-context, of which I am a part.

“…Discernment is necessary if one is going to read the signs of the times. It is no secret that the Catholic Church faces major problems that need to be assessed and responded to in an appropriate way. An appropriate response is not simply to change everything in order to “get with the times”. On the other hand an appropriate response may also not be simply reaffirming everything as it has been. A process of discernment should empower the Church to assess critically where things are and how, at this time, it could and should respond. Maybe change is necessary – maybe things need tweaking.

And, it is not unusual for there to be many different ideas and some ‘messiness’ when one does embark upon a process of communal discernment. This should not give rise to anxiety and defense – which leads to division – but rather a sense that there really is something that needs to be carefully discerned which is critical for the future.

[Pope] Francis has opted for a “Jesuit way of proceeding”. This is rooted in the teachings of St Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits. To discern means to engage in a process of trying to discover the will or desire of God in a given situation. Discernment includes a time of reflection, prayer, talking, listening, some division, and even some debate so that different perspectives can emerge. At the opening of the recent Synod, the Pope asked all present to speak boldly and listen with openness – two key concepts in communal discernment…”

Sunday, 23 November 2014

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to six conversations between author / psychotherapist Mark Vernon and scientist Rupert Sheldrake. They covered a broad range of topics, including conversations about Anatheism, prayer, God and Mindfulness, What is Spirituality? The Spiritual Senses, What Does Christianity Get Right and a whole lot more besides.

The conversations are within the rubric of setting science free.

They’re not long conversations, and they’re well worth a listen for the curious and those committed to life-long learning. I covered a good number of subjects I’d never really thought through.

You find the podcasts here, and iTunes here. Online written interview with Sheldrake here.

Saturday, 22 November 2014

“…My [Pico Iyer] tiny book The Art of Stillness is designed to be read in one sitting, and accompanied by some contemplative photos and a TED talk, at the invitation of the people who organize TED talks, and as a TED Original (mine is the second volume in this new series, and the hope is that there’ll be around ten more over the next calendar year). I know very little about stillness, as a professional travel writer, and am simply a tourist in the land that so many residents have written about with great depth and experience, as I have been a tourist in Tibet and Ethiopia and Easter Island.

But by drawing on the examples of Leonard Cohen and Matthieu Ricard, Thomas Merton and Emily Dickinson, among others, I tried to examine how sitting still can be not just a retreat from the world, but a way of traveling deeper into it, and learning to live with more sensuousness, more compassion, more alertness and vitality.

Stillness is how we make the sense—or lose the sense—that every day requires, perhaps…” (Source)

Thursday, 20 November 2014

Rowan Williams recently reflected on the Pulitzer prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson’s trilogy of novels set in small-town Christian America. The first was Gilead. The second was Home and the most recent installment is Lila (7th October 2014)

Williams writes:

“…This is, at one important level, a novel about the inadequacy of goodness. The world of Gilead is full of virtue and kindness; but it survives by denying something. When Lila, newly baptised, hears Ames and Boughton having a mild theological dispute about the fate of un­believers, she suddenly grasps that all the people who have kept her alive up to this point are “outsiders” to faith and grace, strangers to the kindly old pastors; and she is filled with revulsion at her own “insider” status. She goes to the river and rubs water over her body to “cleanse” herself from baptism, from the pollution of her betrayal of Doll and her graceless friends and travelling companions…”

I’ve valued her non-fiction and I’m really looking forward to working my way through the trilogy. I’ve heard so many positive things about the first two novels. The third has been well reviewed too. The paperback is available in NZ now.

Sunday, 16 November 2014

I’ve pre-ordered the latest publication from David Whyte. Excerpts from the book have been circulating the Internet for a while. The majority of them have been wise and insightful; beautiful reflections on the human condition; on the experiences of being human – the grief, confusion, insight, love, the joy, and the invitations.

Consolations - Product Description

With the imagery of a poet and the reflection of a philosopher, David Whyte turns his attention to 52 ordinary words, each its own particular doorway into the underlying currents of human life.

Beginning with Alone and closing with Work, each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness the appropriate confusion and helplessness that accompanies the first stage of revelation.

Consolations invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.

The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

- from FRIENDSHIP

Pre-ordering now for postage around the 10th December 2014. More information here(paperback) and here (hardcover).

Saturday, 15 November 2014

“…Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. Wholeness doesn’t really overcome the problem, but holds it and transforms it as Jesus did on the cross. As Carl Jung said, most of the great problems of life are never resolved. They’re just outgrown.

Wholeness holds you. You can’t figure this out ahead of time or fully choose this wholeness; you fall into it when you stop excluding. And you are changed in the process. Everything belongs, even the “bad” and dark parts of yourself. Nothing need be rejected or denied. No one need be hated. No one need be excommunicated, shunned, or eliminated. You don’t have time for that anymore. You’ve entered into the soul of the serene disciple where, because the Holy One has become one in you, you are able to see that oneness everywhere else. Almost like magic!

In Thomas Merton’s words, “A door opens in the center of our being, and we seem to fall through it into immense depths, which although they are infinite—are still accessible to us. All eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact”…”